Air ambulance crashes have increased in recent years

AP Photo/La Crosse Tribune/Peter ThomsonDeputy Rich Amundsen of the La Crosse, Wis. County Sheriffs Department investigates the crash scene May 11. A surgeon, nurse and pilot were killed when a University of Wisconsin Hospital Med Flight helicopter crashed shortly after dropping off a patient May 10.

Few would dispute that scores of U.S. lives are saved each year by the hundreds of air ambulance flights now standard across the country.

But the life-saving missions come at a price: Between 2000 and 2005, 60 people died in 84 air ambulance crashes, more than double the previous five years.

A University of Michigan organ transplant team of six died almost a year ago in a June 4 crash, when its small plane crashed into Lake Michigan shortly after takeoff in Milwaukee.

The cockpit tape revealed a frantic conversation between the two pilots just before the crash, as pilot Bill Serra told his co-pilot he is "fighting the controls."

Among the dead were two U-M doctors and two transplant donation specialists.

Earlier this month, a medical helicopter in Wisconsin crashed shortly after takeoff, killing the surgeon, nurse and pilot.

In a review of hundreds of pages of documents, USA Today concluded in a 2005 article that a combination of pilot error, industry carelessness and shoddy government oversight contributed to the trend.

Aero Med has flown some 12,000 flights out of Spectrum Health Butterworth since March of 1987 without serious accident. Officials say the record speaks for itself.

"We have flown thousands of flights," Matt VanVranken, president of Spectrum Health Hospitals Grand Rapids, said at a news conference Thursday, "and this is the first incident."

The cause of Thursday's crash remains under investigation. The air ambulance network expanded dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, as doctors stressed the critical value of getting seriously injured patients to the hospital within 60 minutes. It is what some call the "golden hour."

Aero Med transports patients from as far away as the Upper Peninsula and the Indiana border.

But this nationwide network has been accompanied by a rising number of crashes across the country, prompting questions about safety:

-- The August 2007 crash of a medical evacuation airplane en route to Albuquerque, killing a mother, her 15-month-old daughter and three others.

-- The October 2007 Colorado crash of a medical plane that slammed into a mountain on its way to pick up a patient, killing the pilot, flight nurse and a paramedic.

-- The March 2006 crash in Hawaii of a medical plane that killed the pilot, flight nurse and paramedic. A subsequent investigation concluded the pilot was at fault for failing to maintain control after one of the engines failed.

Despite the record, Shaun Bowling, 40, a helicopter pilot for Midwest Medflight in Ypsilanti, said the industry works hard at maintaining safe flights.

"We are very attentive to safety," Bowling said.

"We won't fly in any conditions less than 500-foot ceiling and 2-mile visibility during the day."

Bowling said the same rule of risk applies to helicopter flight as for airplanes: Takeoffs and landings pose the greatest chance for something go wrong.

"That's where the obstacles are. Any time you leave the ground, it's unnatural," Bowling said. He learned to fly in the National Guard in 1991 and has been flying professionally since 2001.